By “tonnes”, do you mean 2,000lb or 1,000kg? In an engineering context, “ton” is the former and “tonne” is the latter.

“Tonne” is also synonymous with “long ton” (dur to converting to 2204.6lb), as well as “metric ton”.

On the one hand, i get it. It will be for enthusiasts only if that’s the case.

Note that I haven’t said anything about what the price will be, just that Valve has stated that it won’t be a loss leader.

I’ve seen rumors that the Bill Of Materials plus Valve’s usual overhead would still result in a system valued at $500, though I haven’t seen the source and am very skeptical of it.

On the other side, XBox is allegedly targeting $1200 on their standardized custom gaming PC, which I doubt would be worth the price, especially with it running Windows.

Deck isn’t selling millions and it’s doing just fine.

I don’t have have an issue with the rest of your comment but this quote is factually wrong. The Deck actually has sold multiple millions of units.

Built-in GPU and VRAM with the CPU, RAM and cooling optional.

I don’t think that’d be a wise idea. After watching Valve interviews, it’s clear that they designed the entire system around a specific max TDP. Apparently they figured out the TDP, picked a fan to move it, then designed the rest of the cooling system based on that.

If you start swapping out different CPU’s that’ll change the TDP and very quickly become a problem. Plus, the CPU is soldered to the board. Having a socket to allow for swapping would require a redesign of the cooling to account for the increased height

And honestly, we probably should have expected this from the leaked benchmarks. It was already showing hits of using a separate 7600

And for anyone reading this, please contribute to the map when you find a camera irl that’s not included

To be a loss leader doesn’t the need to lead to something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

You have no idea what you’re talking about.

I agree we don’t know if they’re loss leaders yet.

Please actually read the body of the post. Valve has already said in an interview that they won’t be loss leaders

Regardless of the price (and whether or not I even buy one), I think it’s healthy to have another “big” player in the console market.

Tbh, I think it’d be healthier if the console market finally died and Playstation and Nintendo migrate to PC. Closed off ecosystems are anti-consumer

This is the second desktop PC they’ve released, no?

No. They have never designed a desktop before. The original Steam Machine was mainly a branding program for system integrators coupled with the release of the original Steam OS.

rather than reviving a brand that already failed once

Or do what they’re already doing and just call it something else.

But there’s one major thing you’re missing/ignoring: a big reason why the Steam Deck was a hit is because it has good price/performance. EGPU’s are the antithesis of that. They don’t scale well, and they add extra hardware and complexity, driving up price and limiting performance.

You can mod that out really easily

No long campaigns in VR.

I recently watched a video where some dude had the 360 degree VR treadmill and used it for Skyrim VR 2hrs per day for months

It’s a bit trickier with the Steam Machine because it’s a straight-up desktop. There’s a chance for some companies to buy these as mini office PC’s if the price/performance is low enough. If they sell at even a slight loss and enough companies buy like that then they’d lose a ton of money

Though I wonder if making a docked Deck be on equal footing with the Machine would have been a better use of R&D.

No, it would not. Buulding a Steam Deck that’s 6x more powerful (the claimed comparison for the Steam Machine) is NOT possible with today’s technology. For anyone.

The Steam Deck has to be hand portable and get somewhat decent battery life. That leaves little little space for a cooling solution. You cannot beat thermodynamics.

You can see that each face is about the size an adult male’s hand, so it’s about 6" per edge

But, it’s not focused towards gaming.

Except it is

I’ve installed on a separate SSD.

Thankfully that should prevent most issues of Windows fucking up dual-booting

I.e. Gamepass

Hosting servers isn’t free.

And it’s game devs that pay for the multiplayer server upkeep, not the storefronts.

And I highly doubt that any money spent on XBox Live or PSN subscriptions was ever sent their way.

This is just a flimsy defense for greed

And when you quicksave in games, you’ll need to wait 5 minutes for OneDrive to connect to Windows servers to sync up the save before you can continue playing